Followers

A month or so ago a blog I followed was commenting about the number of followers and likes and such he received. He was very concerned with the number of faux-followers, those who cannot possibly actually be reading his posts because they never comment or like the posts. Or they like the posts so quickly after they appear they must be robo-likes. It was such a frequent topic of discussion I felt it bordered on obsessive, and he agreed that it did bother him to an excessive degree, so much so that he took the blog private and started another on another hosting platform and only selected followers would be invited to read. I did not make the cut for an invitation; my feelings were not hurt. I have actually not really thought about it much until just now, when another blogging-related question popped into my head.

First, a disclaimer. This is not a veiled whine about my followers or lack thereof. I am not too proud to beg or whine or have a petite to tsunami-sized tantrum about my lack of attention if it was a concern of mine. Every time I receive a comment, a like, or a new follower I am amazed, grateful, and remind myself that proofing before pressing publish is a brilliant idea that should be deployed every single post. Rarely happens, and I cringe whenever I go back and revisit prior offerings. Forgive me if I read like an idiot; it probably offers you little comfort to know spoken words come flying out of my mouth in grammatically incorrect forms as well.

My thought and question about blogging, followers, likes, comments, etc. is simply this: if you have a large number of followers or regular commenters, does it feel burdensome, like you cannot reply or stay abreast in their blogs as well? I worry about that. I read just about every post on every blog I follow, and because of that my blogroll seems rather sparse. There are a lot of other blogs I read routinely as well, only without the formality of following them.

I suppose since I think of this blog as a conversational dialog I want to be more familiar with my readers who like and who offer comments on occasion. Since it’s impossible for me to imagine developing any sort of master plan to grow the readership, even thinking about how to acquire more followers seems about as realistic an idea as building a ship for a trip to the moon. Once in awhile I breeze through a more commercial or popular blogs that have thousands following and wonder if that’s good, bad, or irrelevant to the author.

That’s good to know … I so love a positive outcome. I was just blazing through a blog that had like 3800 followers and 100+ comments on a single post. Granted that might have included some back-and-forth interaction, but geez … I have a hard time imagining that much chatter.

I officially “follow” 2 blogs, but check daily on 30-50 others — if there are no new postings I just move on. I come to yours from One Family One Income — I comment occasionally but I am reading often.

Aww! I was just reading through these comments and about to add a comment and saw you mentioned my blog. I don’t get a bunch of comments or followers but whenever someone new comments or follows I am just like “wow! that’s awesome!” It does make me wonder once in awhile how many are actually reading on a regular basis, but my goal has never been to amass a big following. I always made a run through reading my blog list blogs and a few others I don’t have on there (or just haven’t taken the time to add).

It’s fun to be mentioned, isn’t it? Especially when your blog is little and has no aspirations of growing into a revenue-generating enterprise.

I love looking through other bloggers’ lists to see what they are following and what is being discussed elsewhere. It opens up new opportunities and exposure to new blogs that interest me and worth reading, even if I am not officially following.